Human Interactions Framework for Remote Ship Operations

The concept of unmanned ships capable of being controlled remotely is now beyond the idea and will start a revolution in maritime industry. In this context, remote ship operations refer to processes of controlling the vessels from distance such that operators obtain information from sensors. Thus, assessment and improvement of human interactions can enhance the overall performance of remote ship operations. However, there are unknown (i) human-human and (ii) human-machine relationships in remote ship operations, which increase the complexity of ship operations and therefore affect the overall system performance. This paper introduces a human interaction framework in remote ship operations domain in order to maximize system performance by minimizing conflicting operations. Hence, the proposed framework identifies the human interactions in remote control centers as well as the main differences between remote and non-remote ship operations. The current paper employed human system integration (HSI) approach in order to consider human as a sub-system. In this respect, literature review and human factor engineering technique (HFE) named similar system analysis were utilized to collect data and accordingly coding process was performed to analyze collected data. The proposed framework updated the earlier models of human-automated interactions and tailored to fit in the context of remote control centers. Besides, differences between remote and non-remote operations provide insight into human interactions in remote ship operations and consequently facilitates performance improvement actions. As a result, the proposed framework provides a solid understanding of human as a critical sub-system in remote ship domain so that gained knowledge could be used by designers and engineers.